Memories
by Laina Inverse
Summary: Colonist/War Hero backstory. Shepard suffers from nightmares and goes down to the Cargo hold to distract herself. There she talks with Garrus about the past, and the two get just a little closer. Fem!Shep/Garrus


It was common knowledge on the SSV-Normandy that Commander Del Shepard never seemed to sleep. If she wasn't studying the star map in hopes of finding a world that would ultimately lead her to Saren, she was taking on assignments from the Fifth Fleet, or making the rounds of her crew and encouraging them to talk out any grievances they might have. Maybe once or twice she would head to her quarters, but it was believed that she spent more time going over world dossiers before she actually slept.

The way she endeavored to keep her crew happy and working well wasn't so unusual, but sometimes there seemed to be a tinge of desperation to her work. The crew was her second family, and were is not for the strength she portrayed, they would all worry just a little bit more.

Still, even that strength couldn't keep her from waking up in a cold sweat, heart pounding like a jackhammer in her chest. She half sat up in her barely-aware state, one arm reaching out as if to draw the ghosts of the past back to her. Falling out of the large bed served to wake her up the rest of the way, as well as freeing a small golden disc from its hiding place under her shirt.

Her grey eyes closed briefly as she fought back the tears that were not from the pain of hitting the floor. It have been almost twelve years since Mindoir, and thought the pain was dulled it still could reduce her to these tears, to this utter helplessness.

Her hand found the disc on its slender chain, and tucked it back under the loose, black tanktop she wore when sleeping, her other raking through sweat-dampened, short blonde hair. A low, weary sigh slid from her lips as she threw the blanket off of her; she wouldn't be sleeping for another hour at the very least.

It was almost aggravating. Mindoir was near twelve years gone, Del had resigned herself to never seeing that colony or anyone from it ever again. She had slowly recovered from the pain of losing parents, sister and lover… but still the dreams continued. They were only heightened by the vision the Prothean beacon had burned into her brain, and twisted into something worse than the slavers.

She checked the clock pinned to the wall and let out another tired sigh. It would be another four hours until the 'night' would end, which meant the most of the crew wouldn't be available for the usual round of talks she tried to employ when she was having the usual trouble sleeping.

Still, sitting and wallowing in the dulled pain wasn't going to be productive. If she wasn't going to be sleeping maybe there would be something in cargo that would take her mind off of the dreams and memories.

Del pulled on a pair of loose black pants so that she was at least decent to the eyes of any awake, and padded on bare feet out of her quarters. Sure enough the mess was deserted, though there was a holo-chess board sitting on the table. Her eyes flicked over to the med-bay, and she shook her head lightly, assuming that both doctors were well asleep. Not that she could blame either of them, that last run on a geth outpost had thrown everyone for a painful loop. Her own shoulder twinged a little in memory, that dislocation had hurt like hell, but at least they had managed to clear them out.

'I might have to ask for a sedative soon,' Del mused, grey eyes flickering in uncertainty. 'Especially if I can't get more sleep soon.'

She disliked the idea, but was sensible enough to know that she couldn't have many more 'three hour nights' before they would start to seriously impact her performance. She could have avoided using it, she knew how to make stimulants from the medi-gel packs, but she was more worried about getting addicted to the stimulants than she was accepting a sedative's deep and dreamless sleep. They key there was 'dreamless.'

The Commander rode the slow, near-silent elevator down to the cargo, pressing her hands to her face and then running them through her short-cropped hair a couple of times. Maybe she should have at least gotten into an undress uniform instead of her pajamas, or at least taken the time to run a comb through her hair. Then again the prospect of looking into a mirror and seeing the bruises and red rims to her eyes wasn't thrilling. Maybe it was better than she didn't know how disheveled she looked.

The doors opened, slightly startling the fatigued woman, and her grey eyes scanned the cargo hold almost instinctively. To her left was the storage lockers of her six trusted crew members as well as the large bulk of a sleeping Wrex. She smiled a little to see the sleeping krogan and flicked her glance over to the Mako on her right, as well as the surprised turian who had been sitting on the top and affecting more repairs.

Garrus Vakarian couldn't help but be a little confused as to the Commander's presence. He was used to seeing her about at all hours, certainly, most of the crew was. He was used to seeing her working on reports or some other form of busywork, studying the star map, or engaging the crew in conversation.

Naturally the conversations included not only the human crew but the non-humans as well. She was always willing to listen if there was a complaint or grievance . No, that wasn't the strange part.

The strange part was the somewhat haunted look in her normally opaque grey eyes, the mild but obvious stagger in her otherwise normally steady walk as she made for the Mako, and for him.

Garrus had spent a lot of time watching the Commander as she worked. As her eyes were difficult to read, he had gone on to learning the subtle signals of her body language instead. He knew that for every person she acted just a little different, but there was something in her posture, in her tone of voice that seemed to subtly discourage them all from asking the same questions she posed to all of them. Her background, her experiences, her life before the Alliance and her current mission… they were all a little mysterious.

Sure there were the official records, but a record was dry and lacked the details that a living person would add into a story to improve the understanding.

But she always managed to get them talking and then before they could ask anything of her something inevitably came up, and she had to leave. Tali had mentioned this to him once, a wry tone reflected in her voice, as had their newest member, Dr. T'Soni.

He climbed down from the top of the Mako as she approached, the repairs had been almost finished, and a brief delay wouldn't cause any harm.

"Commander," he greeted her carefully. "You're about late."

"That's what happens when you're plagued with dreams and visions," she replied, a very small smile of self-disdain crossing her face. "I could say the same of you."

He recognized the turn of phrase, and almost smiled at the transparency. Still, he obligingly turned the subject and looked up at the machine.

"Checking the systems and affecting a few more repairs," Garrus said. "We ran over quite a few geth in that last outpost."

The smile this time was quick, if tired, and somewhat amused, and the Commander laid a hand on the repaired machine.

"It's held up good for us so far," she nodded. "Glad you're keeping an eye on it."

She leaned against the machine, grey eyes downcast and thoughtful. Garrus wondered if she would say anything else, or if all she needed was to be in the presence of another living, thinking being.

"We could have used something like this back on Mindoir," she murmured.

The turian started just slightly, and looked at the human woman who had folded her arms across her chest. Her eyes were distant, but again there was that opaqueness that kept him from fully reading her emotional state. But the opening was there. He nodded mentally, and took the step.

"Mindoir, Commander?"

"It used to be home," there was a dreamy quality to Del's voice, so very different from her usual confident and sharp tone. "My parents were colonists, they took my sister with them and then had me on the colony itself. It was a good life. I knew the land, had enough friends that the general populace of mothers despaired over ever taming the lot of us," and she smiled gently, "and even fell in love."

She half-closed her eyes and let her mind fall back into the memory of happier, more peaceful times. Times when she had been a carefree colonist, hard-working definitely, but happy, certain in her safety and the love that she both gave and received. Her face twitched slightly, tension tightening her shoulders as she thought to the attack that had happened two weeks past her sixteenth birthday.

"Everyone who was anyone was out breaking fields that day for more planting, it had finished raining maybe an hour or two after dawn, so we had to work before the ground made it difficult again. My father was pretty ambitious, and we had a lot of land. Everyone was out that day… friends, family…

"We were expecting an Alliance ship for Trace that day, so maybe we were a little more lax than usual. Trace was… well, once he got out of basic, we had intended to get married. Everyone was so proud, and so full of plans for the future. Maybe that's how they managed to get the drop on us."

Her eyes narrowed fractionally, the only outward sign of any anger that still lingered. Garrus waited silently, wondering if she had ever talked this out with anyone before, or if she'd been holding on to it for however long it had been.

"We had just settled in for midday when the wind changed and brought the smoke our way. They'd started in the town to get what goods they could, and then burned it to the ground when they'd finished, and came out of the fields. Everyone fought back, using what we could get our hands on; from the hoes and scythes to the shards from broken plates.

"Trace… he pulled me out of the fighting. I wasn't really a fighter back then, so it was probably for the best. He locked me in one of the storage sheds, and told me that I had to live. I demanded that he let me out; what was the point of living if everyone and everything I loved died around me?"

She went quiet, allowing old hurts to simmer briefly. One hand fished for the small medallion at her neck, pulling it out for the turian to view closer. It was an image disc, and a flick of Del's thumb against the activation switch caused a hologram to form in the air above her hand.

He looked at it as she did, noting the two human adults which could only be her parents, and the three teens. Shepard looked different with longer hair, Garrus noted thoughtfully, softer, and much more open. Or maybe it was the bright and loving smile that she was directing at the young male who had his arms possessively wrapped around her shoulders.

Her life then had been markedly different from her life as it was now. Being the first human Spectre was difficult enough, with all other Spectre eyes upon her, not to mention her bid against Saren.

"He said that someone had to live so that Mindoir would be remembered. And he died outside that shed, lying to the slavers," for a moment bitterness coated her voice. "Two minutes later the Alliance ship arrives and the slavers—most of them—are wiped out of existence. There was maybe two other people who left Mindoir that day with me. Two out of a colony that had been almost a thousand strong."

Her hand closed over the medallion, disrupting and distorting the image, and after a few seconds it vanished. She then tucked it back under her shirt and raked her hand through her hair, absently noting that she felt a little bit better.

Garrus didn't quite know how to respond to the tale. She had said it so… so _bluntly_, despite the fact that it seemed to cause her pain. Mentally he compared the open smile of the sixteen-year-old Del to the sober expression of the twenty-seven-year-old Commander before him. The former had an innocence and naiveté that the reality lacked, but then again Shepard couldn't afford to be either innocent or naïve. On a battlefield, those qualities got people killed in various stupid ways.

"That's why I fought so hard and for so long at Elysium and the Skyllian Blitz."

Garrus actually jumped, which managed to draw a near-imperceptible smile from the human next to him. Apparently she wasn't quite done talking.

"I didn't want to see more people destroyed by slavers, and I didn't want more people to die just out of reach of everything they loved."

The vulnerability leached away, and the strong façade he was used to took its place. She was undeniably strong and capable, Garrus noted this for what might have been the hundredth time since meeting the Commander, but even she needed someone to hear her when no one else was around.

He hesitated for a moment, and then rested a clawed hand on her slim shoulder. It wasn't much, after all, what could he say to something like that? He was a little surprised when she took the offered comfort, her head tipping so that her cheek could rest on the normally dangerous hand.

They stood like that in a silence broken only by the heavy breathing of the krogan across from them, each with their own thoughts. After what seemed like forever, but was really less than five minutes, the Commander lifted her head, and looked up into her turian friend's eyes.

"Thank you," she said simply.

Garrus let his hand slide from her shoulder, and did his best to smile. She looked a little more at peace now, and he was glad for it.

"I was glad to do it Com… Del."

There was a slight quirk to her lips, an acknowledgement of his use of her first name, and a brief comfortable silence fell between them.

Then…

"How soon do you have to get back to repairing the Mako?" she asked.

"The repairs I've fixed only need some minor fine-tuning," he responded, "they could keep for another hour or two."

"Would you like to play chess?"

He blinked.

"Chess, Commander?"

A slow, slightly mischievous smile curved her lips, and she gestured for him to follow.

"Someone let their holo-board in the mess. Since we both aren't sleeping, it'll be a good temporary diversion. And if you don't know," somehow she doubted this, "I'll teach you."

"That would be… enjoyable."

-

As 0600 hours rolled around, the crew began to mobilize again, and filtered past the mess area in hopes of breakfast. Dr. Liara T'Soni stepped out of the med-bay, paused for a moment, and then smiled.

The holo-board between the turian and the human show a stalemated game, and both were fast asleep at the table.


End file.
